I do hope you enjoyed that new Ferrari 612 you bought a year ago. After all, it’s cost you more than £1,000 a week. That’s not what it cost to run, it’s what it cost in depreciation before you filled up, taxed and insured the beast. Still, it could have been worse — had you plumped for the Maybach 62, you would have lost £128,899 before you switched on the ignition.
We moan like mad about the cost of petrol, because we can see it. In fact, thanks to the collapse in the oil price, a litre costs much the same today as it did three years ago, despite rises in duty. We may complain that our insurance premiums are subsidising all those lunatic drivers who just wing it, but the figures above, compiled by Parker’s, a firm of car-buying advisers, reveal that the biggest cost of that rotting metal outside your house is, well, the rotting metal itself.
Petrolheads view driving as an indulgent hobby rather than a means to an end, but as you pay another servicing bill, you may wonder whether it’s really necessary to own a fast-depreciating asset which sits unused in the road for days on end, a target for the local hoodies. You’re not the first.
The idea of sharing a car is hardly new. Car hire is almost as old as car-making, and has become a cut-throat industry. Shares in Avis Europe, which cost more than 80p two years ago, stand at less than 5p now. The car-hire business model relied on big discounts and cheap debt from carmakers. Gasping for cash themselves, they can’t afford to lend money today simply to shift the metal.
Yet if you live in London, Edinburgh or Brighton, or half a dozen other cities where the fight between car and street is most intense, you must have noticed that some of those precious parking spaces are now designated ‘Car Club Only’.
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